Chrysler: If Not Stronger, at Least Drunker, Higher

Since Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne took the reins at Chrysler last summer, he’s made a priority of fixing the automaker’s reputation for poor build quality, publicly admitting it had “historically ignored” quality concerns and promising a new attention to detail.

So we can’t imagine he’s pleased with this Fox 2 Detroit report showing workers at one of the company’s Detroit plants guzzling 40 oz. beers and smoking what appears to be pot on their breaks.

Fox 2’s investigation revealed a daily routine for some workers at the Jefferson North Assembly plant of swinging by a liquor store on their 30-minute lunch break, stopping in a public park and getting messed up with remarkable efficiency before clocking back in at 11:30 a.m.

Chrysler management, for its part, wants us all to know that it definitely does not approve of laborers slamming beers or burning doobies during work hours. Here’s Scott Garberding, senior vice president for manufacturing:

I'm very, very disturbed about what I just saw in the video and I want to make it clear that we at Chrysler take it very seriously. For us this behavior is totally unacceptable and will be dealt with swiftly. In fact, we've already identified a few of the people involved in this incident. Each of them has been suspended indefinitely, without pay, pending further investigation. We'll continue to pursue this in fact, until we're done.

Lastly I want to say that when we build a vehicle we go to a lot of detail to make sure that even a few people in a situation like this, in fact cannot effect the quality of the vehicle. We have detail systems in place to make sure that every operation is completed and we do multiple-redundants to ensure quality of the vehicles we make.